Site inspection & snagging
The snag list is done before you leave site.
FieldNote turns the walk itself into the deliverable. Two taps per defect on site — photo, room, rating — and the pin lands on your floor plan. By the time you're back at the car the branded snag list, the marked-up plan and the per-trade issue are already written.
Built for architects, by architects — written inside a working practice and used on its own site walks. Works fully offline · Android & iPhone.
The inspection is not the expensive part. The write-up is. On our own last snag inspection the walk took about three hours — and the report took the better part of two days at a desk afterwards, matching photographs to scribbled notes. That second pass is billed at your rate, or not billed at all.
Photographs land in a camera roll, not a report.Eighty near-identical images, none of which say which room they were taken in.
Every defect gets typed twice.Once in the notebook on site, again into a spreadsheet at a desk that evening.
The plan gets marked up by hand.Numbering pins in a PDF annotator, then keeping those numbers in step with the list.
Each trade needs its own cut of the list.Filter, copy, re-format, re-brand, attach, email. Repeat per subcontractor.
The de-snag walk starts from nothing.Cross-referencing last month's PDF against what is actually in front of you.
Put a number on your own version of this in section 04.
Bring the plan in
Import a PDF, an image, or an IFC export from ArchiCAD — where the zones come through as rooms already outlined. No tracing over a drawing by hand.
Walk and capture
Pick the room, shoot the photo, set the rating. Two taps. Drop a pin exactly where the defect is, dictate the note if your hands are full, and move on.
Issue it
One tap produces the branded Excel and PDF, plan markers already placed. Send each trade a link to only their items — no account, no licence, no seat.
Close it out
Contractors mark items fixed with a photo. You verify on the de-snag walk, the list updates, and sign-off is captured on the phone at completion.
Rooms arrive pre-drawn
IFC zone import reads the rooms straight out of the model. Most tools in this bracket make you outline every room by hand before you can start.
Offline is the default, not a mode
Everything lives in a local database on the phone. Basements, lift shafts, half-built estates with no reception — it behaves identically.
Contractors cost nothing
Scoped share links open a filtered list in the browser. Your subcontractors comment and upload proof without a seat, a licence or a sign-up.
Deliverables that look like yours
Excel and PDF come out on your letterhead, in the format South African practices actually issue — not a foreign tool's idea of a punch list.
The office sees it live
A browser console for the team: every project, snag and photograph, with renaming, filtering and report exclusions, on the same sign-in as the app.
Built for architects, by architects
Written inside a working architectural practice and used on its own inspections. Every feature earned its place on a real site walk — not in a workshop about what site teams might want.
Set the three figures below to match your practice. Everything recalculates against a transparent schedule — and every rate in it is editable, so you can argue with our assumptions rather than take them on faith.
Snag lists, de-snags, progress updates — every issued report counts.
Jobs on which you issue any kind of site report.
The loaded cost per hour of whoever produces them.
| Item | The usual way | With FieldNote | Handed back |
|---|
The benchmark — and how to change it
Where 15 → 4 comes from. It is our own practice's before-and-after on a real snag inspection: roughly three hours photographing on site plus about two days at the desk assembling the report, against about four hours on site with FieldNote and the deliverable already written. It is one measured case, not an industry average — so put your own before-and-after in. The case should stand on your figures. A working week is taken as 40 hours.
Prefer to sanity-check it against a real project? Send us one of your recent snag lists and we will run it through with you — info@fieldnote.co.za.
Every defect with its room, trade, priority, due date, responsible party and photographs — on your letterhead, in the layout your office already issues.
Photographs laid out against the marked-up floor plan, numbered to match the schedule, ready to attach to a progress certificate or a completion pack.
A per-trade web link showing only their items. They comment, upload a photograph of the fix and mark it submitted. No account, no seat, no cost.
Signature captured on the phone at practical completion, dated and embedded in the report — the artefact the file actually needs.
The whole dataset out in one tap, for your own dashboards, a client's system, or an archive that will still open in ten years.
The team's projects, snags and photographs in the browser, synced from every phone on the job. Same sign-in as the app, nothing to install.
Early access, on your next walk.
FieldNote is in internal review before general release, so it is not yet a public download. Tell us about your practice and we will bring you in as review places open — and if you want it on your own letterhead, with your branding and your own private cloud, we will quote on that at the same time.